Chris Higgins, who played 12 games with the Flames in the 2009-10 season, opened the scoring and pushed his goal total to six this year. After taking an excellent stretch pass from Jannick Hansen, the forward burst into the Flames zone on a breakaway. He managed to get Miikka Kiprusoff to commit to the low shot, deked around his stick and put it top shelf to make it 1-0.

The Canucks ended up beating the netminder two more times before the period expired with Alexandre Burrows and Henrik Sedin scoring. Both goals were notched on the power play.

DEFENCE?

Defensively, the Flames were a mess. Coverage in their own zone could be described with many adjectives of a less than positive nature but we'll just leave it at bad. The Canucks were essentially allowed to roam free, leaving Kiprusoff with the daunting task of trying to stave off a potent Canucks offensive corps.

A prime example came early in the second period when Cody Hodgson was left completely unattended at the side of the net. Maxim Lapierre won a puck battle along the boards and whipped it back to the rookie who had a wide open cage to tap the puck into.

POWER PLAY CONTINUES TO FALTER

The Flames have talked a lot about improving their tepid power play and they have spent a great deal of time in practice working on special teams. However, that discussion and preparation didn't translate to success on the ice. They simply couldn't generate anything on any of the five Vancouver penalties.

Vancouver were successful on two of their power plays.

STAJAN RETURNS TO THE LINEUP

When the coaching staff decided to go with seven defenceman in the last two games, forward Matt Stajan was the odd man out and found himself watching his teammates from the press box. On Tuesday night, Stajan was inserted back into the lineup.

Stajan was a -1 on the night, registering one shot and winning three of his six draws.

Curtis Glencross played in his 300th NHL game on Tuesday night, his 229th in a Flames jersey. The winger has scored 55 goals and 121 points during his time with Calgary and currently is tied for third in team scoring with three goals and five points.

The forward had a single shot on net and four hits in his 15:53 of ice time.